The Comédie Française, Paris

On 17 February 1673, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin died. He was better known under his stage name, Molière, and he was 51.

It doesn’t have a happy ending, but this is one of my favorite Molière stories.

Molière was a playwright and an actor: he starred in the plays he wrote.

The last play Molière wrote was Le Malade imaginaire (in English: The Imaginary Invalid). It’s a serious play, about love and marriage and choosing a partner wisely. It’s also a funny comedy about a miserly hypochondriac, Argan. Molière interpreted this role.

Molière died on the job. During a performance, the imaginary invalid, Molière, was struck by a very real coughing fit. He collapsed. But then he continued with the performance. Backstage, Molière was again struck by a coughing fit. He was taken home, where he died.

By all accounts, Molière suffered from tuberculosis, for which treatment options in 1673 were limited. I think that Molière’s death was heroic: suffered while acting in a play he wrote, with the irony that the imaginary invalid actually was deathly ill.

One of the legacies of Molière is the Comédie Française, started a few years after Molière’s death, in 1680.